Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor

The first Newspoll in four weeks is well in line with other results to emerge from a busy weekend polling cycle, with Essential Research still to come.

The first Newspoll in four weeks has Labor leading 53-47, compared with 51-49 in favour of the Coalition last time. Primary votes are 38% for the Coalition (down five), 34% for Labor (steady) and 14% for the Greens (up three). Tony Abbott is down five on approval to 35% and up nine on disapproval to 56%, while Bill Shorten is up four to 35% and down one to 41%. Abbott’s lead as preferred prime minister has shrunk from 41-33 to 40-38.

This is the latest in a polling avalanche which has followed the interruption of Easter and Anzac Day, to which Essential Research is still to be added tomorrow. Three other polls published over the past two days have produced strikingly similar results on the primary vote, from which Newspoll differs in having Labor lower and the Greens higher:

• Galaxy, for the first time adding an online panel component to its live-interview phone polling to produce an enlarged sample of 1391, has the Labor lead at 52-48, with primary votes of 39% for the Coalition, 37% for Labor, 11% for the Greens and 6% for Palmer United.

• A ReachTEL poll conducted on Saturday, also from a larger-than-usual sample of 4016, has Labor’s lead at 54-46, with primary votes of 38.9% for the Coalition, 39.6% for Labor, 11.2% for the Greens and 6.0% for Palmer United.

• Morgan’s multi-mode face-to-face plus SMS poll, conducted every weekend but compiled fortnightly, has Labor leading 53.5-46.5 according to the conventional two-party preferred method that allocates preferences as per the result of the previous election, increasing to 55-45 when preferences were allocated by the respondent. The primary votes are 37.5% for the Coalition, 37% for Labor, 12% for the Greens and 5.5% for Palmer United.

UPDATE: And now Essential Research comes in entirely unchanged on last week, with Labor leading 52-48 from primary votes of 40% for the Coalition, 38% for Labor, 10% for the Greens and 5% for Palmer United. Questions on the deficit tax show the importance of wording in these situations – just as carbon tax questions got a more favourable response when the rationale for them was laid out, inquiry about “a temporary ‘deficit’ tax on high and middle income earners aimed at bringing the budget back to surplus” has support and opposition tied at 34%. However, 48% favour the proposition that “introducing a new ‘deficit’ tax would be a broken promise by the Abbott Government” versus 33% for “it is more important to reduce the deficit than stick to pre-election promises”.

Other findings have “management of the Australian economy” all but unchanged since a year ago, with a total good rating of 40% (up one) and total bad of 31% (down one), but with results by party support having changed beyond recognition; Joe Hockey favoured over Chris Bowen to manage the economy by 33% to 27%; Labor better than Liberal at “representing the interests of working families (47-20), Liberal a lot better than Labor at “representing the interests of the large corporate and financial interests” (54-13), and Liberal better at handling the economy overall (40-26); 23% very concerned about job losses, 34% somewhat concerned and 29% not at all concerned; 77% believing the gap between rich and poor to have increased over the last 10 years, with only 3% for decreased; 29% thinking their own financial situation good versus 26% for poor; “the cost of living” rated by far the economic issue of most concern (56%, with unemployment in second place on 11%).

but those 50 today don’t realise they will be 85 when that happens if they are still alive.

So what. Nobody should bother to have an opinion if its not going to affect them personally??

People 50 or so have no faith that the Govt wont change it again so that it does and no faith that they wont raise the age at which people can access their own money that’s in Super.

Also, they can relate to the issue personally as they are often already looking at retirement planning. they assess it and think:

“Fwark that for a joke. This lot on their Parliamentary scheme that gives them a pension from the moment they lose their seats expect someone else to keep working until 70?”

Of course its obvious why. Doesn’t everybody have access to $85000 dollar publicly funded cheques for 5 months “work” in writing down right wing un-researched brain-farts and calling it an authoritative Audit Report??

…
Things are going pretty much as I suggested they would. The failure of Rudd/Gillard have us a Liberal government that never properly learned the lessons of 2007 and had an adequate time in opposition re-building.
…

Sorry David but that is, for lack of a better word, nonsense. So ALP is to blame that we had a lazy opposition for the last 6 years? So ALP is to blame L/NP though they can wing it and spend 100% of their energy on destroying the government and in turn confidence of the people in the economy, instead of allocating some of the time they had in opposition to think what could be done for the country if and when they get into power?

People had a clear choice:
1. believe the L/NP nonsense of governing chaos, budget crises, destruction of the towns by price on carbon, ‘need for surplus’ and the best was that Tony, that amazing Abbott chap, is their best friend.
2. Continue with the government that has failed to sort their own issues, but have done better job at running the country than most other countries have done in the last 6 years, given the underlying circumstances. Hell, even if the circumstances were better, the way Aus economy performed was an excellent result.

But yeah, blame the ALP for everything, things they deserve to be blamed on (their own stupidity wrt to their own party politics) and things they don’t deserve to be blamed on (L/NP being as lazy and vicious as they are).

There is only one entity at fault here, and it is Australian public for believing nonsense that was thrown at them.

Imagine what the polls might look like if the ALP were effective opposition.

I’m pessimistic – the Libs are literally crapping upon the Australian public from a great height and a six point deficit is the worst it’s getting? 28 months out from an election. Definitely not alarm bell territory yet for the Coalition.

I see caps on spending during election campaigns as being the key tool here. It doesn’t matter how much people donate if you can stop them spending beyond a certain limit.

It’s pointed out of course that the major parties can do an end run around spending limits by allowing ‘super pacs’ to advertise on their behalf. One response to that might be to require all agencies or organisations running ostensibly political advertising to disclose fully all of their funding sources in near real time to the AEC, and for these disclosures to be posted on the web. Penalties would attach to inaccurate disclosures, with serious fines and disqualification imposed on officers of such organisations.

Where the organisation could be shown to be effectively a related organisation to a
political party the spending would be accounted as part of that party’s spending cap. Tests would include but not be limited to common donors, common officers, shared resources and so forth.

Imagine what the polls might look like if the ALP were effective opposition.

I’m pessimistic – the Libs are literally crapping upon the Australian public from a great height and a six point deficit is the worst it’s getting? 28 months out from an election. Definitely not alarm bell territory yet for the Coalition.

You’re a hard man to please Nick. Just stand back out of the way while the rest of us finish doing our hand stands.

For whichever company (or industry body) that PAYS Newspoll to do research on their behalf. The political questions are just a few questions at the start of a much longer survey.

I have been contacted by Newspoll twice. The first time they were clearly doing research for the banking industry because I got asked a lot of questions about banks. The second time which was perhaps 3 years later they asked me a lot of questions about mobile phone providers, so I guess they were doing market research for Telstra, Optus, or perhaps Vodafone.

Political surveys are essentially what market research firms like Newspoll, Galaxy, Nielsen, Morgan do in order to promote their services. That’s why they charge a lot less to the media companies that publish the results than they charge to the companies that buy market research.

The Greens reading in this Newspoll is a few points high – I’ve been tracking the Green vote across polls since that Nielsen and they are probably really in the 11s. So even though the Labor primary looks lowish the 2PP is not much affected since the two cancel out.

It’s not clear why being accurate just prior to polling day gives a pollster credibility at any other point in the electoral cycle, but this must be true since I’ve read it at least 100 times on this blog.

Anyway, William’s tracker after Essential is going to be a sight for these sore Labor supporter’s eyes.

Looking at these Newspoll numbers:
If I take Greens 14% and give 83% preference to the ALP
and ‘Others” 14% at 46% preference then that adds 18% to the ALP primary of 34% to give a 2PP of 52.
It looks like the ALP has been rounded down to 34% and probably the Greens/others similarly.

If I was the Libs I’d be quite relieved by this poll. Only 3% down after the deluge of bad news they’ve had over the past few weeks. People here really do need to be aware of the echo-chamber effect of social media and blogs like this. We all hear each other saying the same things and assume that’s what the masses are saying too. Well, for the most part, they’re not.

Yes, its true we live a commentary-blog bubble, but I dont think the LNP have yet plumbed the sort of poll depths we’ll see when the ‘deceit tax’ yabber (so what, pollies lie) get’s overtaken by the ‘sick tax’ anger (yeah lets pay TWICE for Medicare).

Everybody left of Genghis Brandis repeat after me: we already pay for Medicare, via taxes. Charging us a fee on top is user pays *twice*.

Not the article I was looking for, but you live in the Riverland or thereabouts? I hope I am right that it was you who mentioned Kay in one of your posts. There are two freds on PB so I may be mistaken. Apologies if so.

Kay Matthias is the chief executive of Rural Business Support, which runs the RFCS in South Australia and the Northern Territory. She says there is room to streamline the delivery of the service in some cases, but that scrapping it altogether would be a mistake.

If I was the Libs I’d be quite relieved by this poll. Only 3% down after the deluge of bad news they’ve had over the past few weeks.

I’d say that any smart LNP type (assuming there are such) would be profoundly troubled. All the polls are clearly consistent and it might be that enough people really have decided that they made a dreadful mistake in September to read any future LNP attempts to pander or pork-barrel as deceitful or springing from weakness. So although they might only be down three points, this is as good as it gets for the next two years, with every bad week confirming the trend.

Those people who have shifted are not going to stay quiet within their cohorts, and if most of that cohort defects, six months from now, the polls could be 57-43.

I said in several places back in September that Abbott would not take the LNP to the next election and that he might be gone 18 months in. I have no reason to doubt that judgement now, and indeed, he might not last until Christmas.

If that occurs, that would be a more hurtful blow to the LNP than anything that happened to the ALP from November 2007 to late August 2013. Abbott had a stronger position than Rudd or Gillard had ever had in the Reps, so to be rolled would be even worse. It seems as if he has already been rolled on PPL and he is now looking to be utterly incapable of getting control of the public agenda.

Right, now I understand, I forgot the name of that person in that article. I’m not in that region, I’m further south – ‘thereabouts’ would be more accurate – I used to have a bit to do with the Riverland but not for some years now.

They’re back in landslide territory of 2007. In fact, since the election, they’ve hardly won an opinion poll.
They can’t win from here unless they start a war or engineer a false flag operation.
They’re finished, caught between the voters on one side & their paymasters on the other.

The bias weightings for Newspoll in BludgerTrack are basically to add a point for Labor, take one off the Greens and leave the Coalition as is, which adds up to practically nothing on two-party preferred. So it’s following its usual pattern in this poll, in somewhat greater degree.

About this blog

William Bowe is a doctoral candidate with the University of Western Australia’s Discipline of Political Science and International Relations. He has been running the electoral studies blog The Poll Bludger since January 2004, independently until September 2008 and thereafter with Crikey.